


as if from ashes

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title from Agha Shahid Ali.</p><p>Happy Yuletide, Omphale23!</p></blockquote>





	as if from ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [omphale23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/gifts).



Amritsar is freezing at five in the morning. It’s Christmas Eve, a holiday no one but Kip is really aware of at his home. As he leaves the house, it’s already bustling with activity, people wandering about sipping from steaming tumblers of tea and cheerily gossiping about the neighbours, the Congress party, and any other topic of conversation that comes to mind while one basks in the knowledge that one is in comfortable surroundings and that any statement one makes, no matter how polemic, is extremely unlikely to be challenged.

He walks out on to the small lane outside, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his thickest winter coat. He’s forgotten his gloves again. 

 

\--

 

‘Harmandir Sahib,’ he’d said once, lying on a makeshift bed in a ruined villa in Italy, his hair loose and damp from a recent wash. Hana had mentioned the Golden Temple, and he’d been awed—yet again—at how much she knew, how much she wanted to know.

‘It’s what—three hundred years old?’

‘Mm.’ She was idly braiding his hair into desultory little plaits, her fingers quick and clever and affectionate.

‘More details,’ she said, lightly slapping the side of his head. ‘Fewer sleepy noises.’

He’d let out a laugh, propping himself up on an elbow and peering up at her in the almost-darkness. ‘Almost three and a half.’ They could have lit another lamp, but resources were scarce. Besides, he liked the intimacy of this, of hiding from sight, making a little den of their own, undisturbed by light. ‘Centuries,’ he added, just in case he hadn’t been clear enough. (She would have understood anyway, but Kip liked to be precise.) She was a silhouette beside him, her chopped-short hair soft beneath his fingers when she bent her head over his.

 

\--

 

He buys a cup of tea from a stall outside the gurdwara. There are scores of teashops around, some consisting just of long steel flasks attached to bicycles, the tea-seller unhooking his flask and walking around among the early-morning devotees heading to the Golden Temple, trying to entice them to pay two annas for a disposable mud cup of cardamom-flavoured tea. There’s little else that’s as tempting at that hour of a winter morning. Kip drinks his while it’s still scalding, feeling the tiny river of warmth slide down his throat. He throws the cup into a gutter and hears the crunch as it shatters on impact.

Inside, the lake around the temple is still, the air unmoving and heavy with cold. There are a couple of worshippers determinedly wading into the water, intent on being blessed that day. Hands buried in his armpits, he leans against one of the massive pillars of marble and watches as the weak rays of the winter sun begin to illuminate the golden structure in the middle of the lake. He’s not going in, not today. 

How Hana would enjoy being here, how she would delight in the old books and older architecture of the temple. She’d laugh at how ostentatious people can be about their gods, tease him gently about the gold of the temple as though he were personally responsible for it.

‘Hey,’ he says, noticing a small child on the steps at the edge of the lake. It’s so soundly bundled in its woolens that it takes him a moment to realise that it’s a girl. It’s another moment before he notices that she hasn’t responded, because she’s probably never heard anyone say a word in English before. ‘ _Dhiana rakho_ ,’ he says, reaching out to touch her shoulder, helping her keep her balance. _Careful_.

One of her hands is already touching the water, fingertips skimming the surface. He puts his hand lightly over hers, drawing her away, the shock of the cold water making his fingertips sizzle as though they’d been shocked with electricity.

 

\--

 

‘Careful,’ Hana says, cupping the older woman’s elbow with her palm. The ice outside the store is slippery. It’s too late for the woman’s shopping, though: her paper bag of groceries falls from her hands as she stumbles, her body warm and vulnerable for a moment against Hana’s, apples and tomatoes skittering across the icy ground.

‘Here, let me…’ Hana says, and they get on their hands and knees, scrambling to catch the fruit as though it’ll get away from them if they don’t reach it in time. They’re both smiling when they get to their feet again, as though they’re both victors in a children’s game.

 

\--

 

They’d gone for a last ride on Kip’s motorcycle the day before he’d left, neither of them acknowledging that he was leaving. Italy’s countryside was warm, much warmer than she could remember Toronto ever being. Kip’s hair was tied up neatly in its turban—he never went out with the long strands in disarray, the way she loved them best.

They couldn’t talk over the noise of the engine and the wind rushing past them, but they’d tried anyway, Hana yelling into his ear and Kip half-turning his head to shout back his responses, making the motorbike wobble momentarily when his attention shifted to her. She wasn’t afraid they’d crash, because Kip wouldn’t crash. He’d keep driving, travelling and travelling until he reached where he wanted to be.

 

\--

 

The cabin at the lake has heating and she’s just stocked up on food, so she’s good for about a week or so. She’s got her Herodotus to read, full of her patient’s drawings, its scribbled notes. Sometimes she feels that the book belongs more to Katharine than to Almásy, his memories of Katharine more potent than his need to record his own self. It seems only fitting that the most vivid image of them Hana has in her mind is Katharine by the fire, telling her listeners Gyges’ tale, her hair golden in the desert night.

Hana writes in the book too. Sometimes. At times, she scribbles cheeky little notes to Almásy, imagining he’ll find them when he wakes from his sleep, as though they’re still in his room there at the broken-down villa, with the mural on the wall that Kip had drawn, and Kip himself, working on something in the garden when she looks out of the window. 

Sometimes they’re notes to Kip. One morning she wakes up and reaches for the book before she gets out of bed, carefully writing _Shubh savera_ in a small empty space on a page covered with Almásy’s ink, saying the phrase aloud the way he’d taught her. _Good morning._ Below it she writes, carefully: _Merry Christmas_. She says that aloud to herself too, the way she’d say it if Kip were here, already out of bed hours before her, yelling from the kitchen that he’d made breakfast, his voice resounding in the cabin, his irrepressible energy pulling her out of bed, smiling even though she really isn’t a morning person, her bare toes touching the cold wood of the floor, her senses already anticipating the first fresh hot sip of cardamom-flavoured tea.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Agha Shahid Ali.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Omphale23!


End file.
